The Christian Kingdom of Makuria — the Strongest Kingdom of Nubia in the Middle Ages
After the fall of the Kingdom of Meroe in the fourth century CE, three kingdoms rose in the land of Nubia: Makuria (Makuria) with its capital Old Dongola, Nobadia in the north, and Alodia with its capital Soba near Khartoum. Makuria embraced Christianity in the middle of the sixth century CE through church missions coming from Byzantine Egypt, and its churches were subject to the authority of the Coptic Patriarchate in Alexandria, as peer-reviewed academic studies published in this field document.
In the middle of the seventh century, Makuria confronted an invading Arab army in 651 CE, then the Baqt agreement was signed — a historic truce that maintained a permanent peace for about six centuries. The agreement guaranteed the protection of Muslims passing through the kingdom, and they had a mosque in Old Dongola where they performed their worship, while the kingdom's trade flourished with Byzantine Egypt and Abyssinia, according to Smithsonian Magazine's description of the results of recent excavations.
Makuria annexed its northern neighbor Nobadia, and the two became one kingdom with its capital Dongola, and it reached its peak between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The capital was a great city extending over 200 hectares: more than twelve churches and two monasteries, including the Monastery of the Holy Trinity with its unique wall paintings from the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, and the crypt of Bishop Georgios, whose walls are covered with Greek, Coptic and Old Nubian texts. Its inhabitants used waterwheels (saqias) to irrigate the fields, and lived in two-storey houses with hot-water baths — a remarkable urbanity for its era.
The excavations of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw — working at Old Dongola since 1964 — revealed in 2021 the largest known Nubian church so far in the heart of the old citadel: a building 26 meters wide and the height of a three-storey building, believed to be the cathedral and the seat of the Archbishop of Dongola, who supervised churches extending a thousand kilometers along the Nile. Then the 2023 excavations revealed rare frescoes depicting Christ, the Archangel Michael and the Virgin Mary, and inscriptions mentioning King David and calling on God to protect the city.
The campaign of King David — among the last Christian kings of Makuria — against Mamluk Egypt in the late thirteenth century was the beginning of the end: the Mamluks responded by invading Nubia, and Old Dongola was sacked for the first time in its history, then the kingdom disintegrated in the fourteenth century. But its legacy — its churches, paintings and manuscripts — is still emerging from beneath the sands today, bearing witness to centuries of Nubian civilization.
📚 Sources: Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology — University of Warsaw (pcma.uw.edu.pl); Smithsonian Magazine; Archaeology Magazine; Peer-reviewed academic studies (Open Book Publishers). — Editorial Team